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Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Vacation day trip: Days 2 and 3 or criminny, where did this rain come from?

If I had taken pictures on day 2, you'd be seeing pictures of rain. I rearranged my schedule to take care of a few pressing matters at home and planned to get out late afternoon. For those of you not from Colorado, summer afternoon rains are the norm. The rains can range from a gentle to ferocious with hail and high winds. So scratch day 2.

Wednesday I got another late start. No one to blame but myself. I was enjoying a few extra hours of sleep. When I woke up I saw that the skies looked like they did yesterday but decided to hell with it...I'm going. Where to go? You guessed it...Clear Creek. I really do get skunked at other places as well as Clear Creek.

It was 10 degrees cooler than Monday and I saw no one else on the water. I can tell because I drove past the favorite place and kept on going until I had to turn around. There was a slight breeze blowing about 25 mph cross ways of course. I forgot my camera when I left home and had to go back and get it a few miles from the house so it looked like it was going to be another one of "those days."

As you can see from the photo above, the water had calmed down a little despite the evening rains we've been getting. I put on a Caddis looking thing with rubber legs (I love Caddis in general and rubber legs in particular) and weighted in front. I'd show you a picture but I lost it. Not in a tree, but snagged on a fish that took me into some rubble and broke me off.

After about an hour of catching a lot of nothing, I noticed the sky was darkening and the debate started. Go or stay. I was losing the battle to stay when I heard someone say hi. There standing behind me was a fellow fly fisherman. We chatted awhile and he told me he had some luck downstream about 1/4 mile. My mind was made up and I started downstream.

I had never fished much downstream from this location, only up. Don't ask me why because I couldn't tell you. The longer I walked the more I was entranced by the scenery. Once I reached the farthest point I had ever fished, I looked up at the threatening looking clouds and said GO!

I walked into trees and such that were over my head and blocked what little sun there was. I will tell you that I didn't enjoy it even though I could see daylight here and there.

For those of you that don't know it, I'm on several blood thinners to help keep blood clots from forming in my body. This means when I bleed, I really bleed. My legs took a beating from the trees and rocks. I finally walked what I thought was about 1/4 mile and exited the tunnel of foliage to what was a really a nice looking stretch of water.

I'm tired just talking about it. The guy I ran across earlier had said he was using a brown colored parachute dry. I therefore tied on an Adams and started casting. And casting and casting. Nothing.

After walking the area for about an hour, I looked
up again and noticed the clouds were streaming in. After four hours of tramping and fishing I had nothing to show for it except legs that look like I was shot with buckshot. You can thank me later for not posting pictures of that.

How do I rate this day. Well a picture of a fish would have been nice. Instead I explored again, got some needed casting practice and was outdoors. Doesn't really get much better than that.